Talk:Horse/Archive 1

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Contents

As food

There's nothing here on the consumption of horse meat. -- Tarquin 17:25, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I'll have a go at it. // Liftarn

Also, the section on the horse as food, while relevant to the topic of horse, is a bit overbearing within this article. The reason being, (and I realize that some contemporary cultures which have distanced themselves from the concept of what horses are all about may not 'get it') is that the horse, both today and most assuredly yesterday, played such a significant role in the uplifting of mankind and his civilization, in the form of warfare, agriculture, and recreation, that such contributions far outweigh the relatively inconsequential notion that some people eat horse flesh. And this opinion isn't just one of fondness and affection for the horse, but really just a fact.

To be honest, the food section needs to be relegated to a separate topic, or a footnote. You don't agree? I'll find you 45,000 books on the subject of horses and horsemanship as documented through the ages. How many can you find me on eating horses? Yes, the number 45,000 is not just a number pulled out of my hat, but rather a researched figure. In fact, more has been written about the horse since man began writing than virtually any other subject. --Bryan

I agree. I doubt that there is a section under "Homo sapiens" for cannibalism. And probably there isn't a section under "canines" for "dog meat in world cuisine." If there is an article detailing "things people eat", then maybe that would be a better place for such information. Horse leather and (formerly) horse hair have major commercial uses as well. Horses are injected with certain toxins so that their antibodies can be harvested to treat humans for such maladies as snake bites. Horse milk and even horse blood are important food sources as well. But I doubt that people who want to know about horsemeat consumption would check under "horse" any more than people who want to know about pork consumption would check under "swine." P0M 04:47, 5 May 2004 (UTC)
Actually, there is Rebelgecko 04:43, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm new here, and I don't personally want to do such a massive move/rearrange as I have suggested (axing the horse as food subsection), but I certainly encourage it. I mean no disprespect to the creator/s of that section, but in all honesty, it's blatantly offensive within the context of the article.

Yes, I'm a horse lover, but I can be objective as well, and, well, the discussion of horses as sandwich meat deserves to go... --Bryan

Fair enough. However the claim "In some parts of Europe horses are specially raised for their meat." deserves a source. I have never heard about that. // Liftarn

I see that ALL references to horse-eating have now been excised - where has this information been moved? (Mmartins 21:22, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC))

It's in the taboo meat article. There should be a reference to there. I'll readd it. // Liftarn
I've checked and it was Horseyboy1701 who deleted the section. [1] // Liftarn
I made a little change up near the top so "they have been used as food" links to that article. It used to be linked to the food article. How silly! (qqwref 1:46, 21 Jun 2005)

Removal of 'As Food' section

I've removed a recently added picture of horse meat and some one liners regarding the use of horse meat as it is:

  • duplicated on the taboo meat page
  • not really in the context of this article
  • likely to offend horse lovers
  • likely to generate unwanted edits
Garglebutt 22:20, July 18, 2005 (UTC)
As it is the horse part of the taboo meat article is by far the largest section so it deserves some space in this article too. I wonder if it's perhaps better to split out the horse meat section into an article of it's own... Anyway, I readded the picture (but perhaps the picture in the basashi article is better). The illustration should not be offensive to anybody but fanatics and we can't cater for every fringe group. // Liftarn
I don't agree as the same picture is in the taboo meat article that I have recently expanded and makes good sense there whereas it is out of context in this article. I don't think it is about fanatics so much as illogical duplication. If I search for horse meat I am redirected to taboo meat. I've added horse meat to the Horse (disambiguation) page so I'm going to argue removing the food use from this article other than a link under 'See Also'. Unless there is vehement disagreement I will remove this section from the article entirely in the next few days as anyone wanting information on horse meat will find it far more easily than stumbling onto this article and that will put an end to any disagreement with horse fanciers. Garglebutt 14:04, July 19, 2005 (UTC)
I say it should be kept. It's too important (by both those who oppose it and those who not) to be swept under the rug. // Liftarn
I wasn't intending to remove all references, just add a one line to the 'See Also' section as it is a related article rather than being in context for this article. Garglebutt 22:28, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

A reminder that consumption of horse meat is not in context for this article and has been moved to a new article titled horse meat. Garglebutt / (talk) 22:13, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

It wouldn't be inappropriate to have a short section on it, with a link to the main article. siafu 22:16, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
The problem is people kept adding more and more to the short section and the horse lovers kept vandalising it. There is a reference in the See Also section and most people interested in horse meat would search for horse meat. Garglebutt / (talk) 22:20, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
So revert the vandals and trim the section. siafu 22:30, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
That becomes on ongoing management task with horse lovers being the main audience and majority stake holders in the article making it hard to maintain NPOV. Both this article and the taboo food and drink and horse meat articles have gone through a big upheaval due to the frequent modifications to this article in particular and I really don't think we want to go back down that path again. Garglebutt / (talk) 22:42, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
Ongoing management is what happens on wikipedia. Besides, it seems rather self-evident that the current situation is just as difficult for the "majority stake holders" (which I interpret to mean "regular editors") as the proposed alternative. siafu 23:41, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
I refer back to bullets at the start of this section. I'm trying to keep wikipedia logically consistent and having every article refer to a bit of every other article doesn't help. This article has been stable for over a month and some good additions have been made to the horse meat article by people who originally touched this article. Garglebutt / (talk) 23:56, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps we have slightly different definitions of the world stable? [2] indicates to me that the article has been rather unstable for the last month. No one is suggesting having every article refer to every other article; that's a straw man. It does, however, seem appropriate to have a paragraph on the use of horses as food, with a Main article: link at the top. As it is, this article has significantly less information about human consumption of horses than other articles on domesticated animals (see cattle, goat, sheep), which appears to be an inconsistency rather than a consistency as you insist. siafu 00:04, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
The difference is that horse meat is considered more of a western taboo than other livestock which is often raised specifically for consumption. The edit churn of late has been in relation to the main context of the article which is how lovely horses are when they are alive. 8) Garglebutt / (talk) 00:32, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
No, it's more of a United Kingdom/US and Australia taboo. Please don't assume it's a general western taboo. Even so, it's still a systematic bias. // Liftarn
Using western taboo as justification for article content would be an example of systemic bias. siafu 00:38, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
I think the phrase generally understood is applicable here. It is nigh on impossible to satisfy every view so we typically go by consensus. To end this useless debate I have added a short paragraph into the horse article. I look forward to your assistance in managing any subsequent expansion or vandalism. Garglebutt / (talk) 01:33, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

I (being Bryan) was the original person who suggested that the "horse as food" section go. Despite the claim that those in favor of "horse meat" are being unbiased, let's look at it from another angle:

If I google the phrase: "horse meat" or "horses as food" (be sure to use quotes when googling in the instance so that we don't capture sites just discussing food and horses) I notice that in both instances, the number of hits is less than if I google "dog meat" or "dogs as food". Yet, I gave a cursory look at the Dog entry here on Wikipedia and I failed to notice any discussion of dogs used as meat (Total of one sentence in fact). - Bryan

Certainly, those Wikipedia editors, in their desire to be unbiased, objective, and dare I say, consistent, as they have expressed themselves that they wish to be consistent, should immediately be making additions to the dog article. Or wait - let me guess, they own dogs? - Bryan

  • I don't own a dog or a horse and am not a fancier of either. The dog article should probably have some content on their use as food. I'll add it to my todo list. Garglebutt / (talk) 05:39, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
Well I got enthused so I've created Dog meat based on content from Taboo food and drink and added a reference to the Dog article. Looking on google there is more content to be added on the methods used for raising and slaughtering of dogs. Garglebutt / (talk) 06:14, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
To play devil's advocate, aren't you going to take the next step and add a section somewhere entitled "humans as food"? Be sure to note kuru in the side-effects sub-section. ;-)
To be a little more serious, if there is an article or section on "pigs as food," it would seem that a good encyclopedia article would have more than information on sausage, cuts of meat, etc. It ought to have a nutritional breakdown. How do articles on beef production handle the ethical issues? It is forbidden in many jurisdictions to kill and eat dogs. The SPCA gets involved. But we happily kill pigs, which may be one of the few animals smart enough to figure out that they are going to their deaths -- or at least they probably know enough to be more than a little afraid of going into a place that smells of blood and dead pigs. Would it be o.k. to kill and butcher a Klingon? Spock? P0M 07:30, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
I forgot about chimps. There has been a recent movement to consider them members of the genus Homo on the basis of their extremely close genetic relationship to Homo sapiens. That change would make it even more questionable to subject them to pain and early death by using them as convenient lab animals. Maybe we should have an article on their use as food, too. They should be almost as ideal a source of proteins for Homo sap. as are members of Homo sap.
Then there are spiders, grasshoppers, earthworms, goldfish... Why restrict articles or sections on food use just because so few people happen to realize how tasty some of these protein sources are? Would we have a section in the entry for willow trees on the use of the cambrium as survival food? Or do such articles belong under a general article on foods? P0M 07:43, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
I've been editing articles about crickets lately, and double checked that article. Yes, it mentions crickets are food for both people and pets. If you think information about other animals is missing their culinary delights sections, feel free to add them. SchmuckyTheCat 17:46, 30 January 2006 (UTC)


Referendum on inclusion of content regarding eating horses

In light of past contention on the horse meat issue, I thought I'd make an official referendum to capture the consensus.

  • Keep As a horse meat fan, I expect to see some reference to it in a horse article. But in deference to lovers of unprepared horse, I'm agreeable to keeping it to a short, sanitized summary. At a minimum, the article should include a link to horse meat and mention that eating horse is common in some countries and abhorred in other countries. However, I wouldn't want this important information censored for whatever reason. The Hokkaido Crow 14:04, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep as it is. Short, to the point and just linking to horse meat. But I'm not sure it fits under "Domestication of the horse and surviving wild species". // Liftarn
I also am not sure what section it should go under. Perhaps Miscellaneous? The Hokkaido Crow 21:03, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
  • No vote, as Wikipedia is not a democracy. It's a fact that horses are eaten. The omission of this fact from the article would be censoring information. As a greater article on the issue exists, it's fine for a minimal section stub to point to it. SchmuckyTheCat 22:19, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. As an aside Wikipedia is very much a democracy, however the question is regarding the amount of content in THIS article as it has been an issue for horse lovers. It was until recently a reference in the See Also section but some people wanted more so I added the current brief paragraph and reference to the main article. I have also now moved the section to Miscellaneous per suggestion from The Hokkaido Crow. Garglebutt / (talk) 04:35, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
  • If you actually read that reference fully you'll see the point being made is that Wikipedia is not primarily a democracy in its decision making process, however it is a democracy in that everyone can have an opinion and popular opinions usually set the agenda. Garglebutt / (talk) 12:44, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
  • My only intention in creating this referendum was to record a consensus to guide future authors on this subject. It is not an attempt to create a binding democratic decision. As the horse meat information has been removed several times, clearly guidance is needed. The Hokkaido Crow 13:57, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Consensus is necessary on this issue; I did not think at any point that those who removed or advocated removal of the section on horse meat were acting in bad faith, so relevance does need to be agreed upon. I believe that all that's necessary here is a stub section with a link to the full article. siafu 19:03, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

This is just DISGUSTING AND SAD. But I have a new idea. Why don't we add "as food" to other animal pages? people need to find out. Don't take me wrong though: Its horrible. Dogs, cats, even hamsters get more attention than horses, as if they are liked much more. Makes it seem that horses are disliked. I remember in first grade (5 years back) my best friend told me, the biggest horses lover in the class that she hated horses, because they were "annoying". what is up with that? I think that we should teach some people a lesson. Who will join me to change the animal pages? --Divya da animal lvr 18:45, 10 April 2006 (UTC)


Stuff

Also, I added some stuff about coat colors and markings, but more can and should be said - I merely provided the framework. -- Bryan

Is anyone here familiar enough with horse coat colors that he/she could add captions to the photos in the article? Elf | Talk 22:13, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Hiya, another newbie here, but I have a HND in equine studies, so I'm more than willing to lend a hand in the colours section, I've already created pages for skewbald, piebald, and oddbald. Also I have extensive notes on many other subjects, from evolution, breed development and domestication, to tack and equipment, and methods of exercise for the competition horse. I'd be happy to include these subjects too. --Poison_kitty 11:51, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Dogs

To whom it may concern: Please feel free to visit Wikipedia:WikiProject Dog breeds/Categories because I think that structuring Horse articles and Dog articles could take a similar tack--would be nice to use same subcategories for consistency. Elf | Talk 04:08, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

spelling convention

The general rule to be followed is to stick with the spelling conventions (American or British) used by the article when it was begun. (Otherwise we would find mentions of color and colour, etc., in the same article.) Therefore I have reverted the change from "meter" to "metre." P0M 23:41, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The first version of this article is clearly in American English. But I'll let somebody else fix this article's spelling appropriately. :P --mav 01:52, 13 July 2005 (UTC)


Domestication

"The most common date of domestication of the horse and its first use as a means of transport is circa 2000 BC." This is Horse-S***. The Indo-Iranians were using horse-drawn chariots at the date. 4000-5000 is a better date, and do your homework.--FourthAve 10:48, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

I've been harsh, but your dates are absurd. This article also lacks any documentation -- which explains the absurdity. There is some good stuff in here, tho'. So, sportsfans, clean it up, and quote real authorities. --FourthAve 11:17, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
WP articles come at all stages of dilapidation. As long as nobody objects to your point, there is no reason to be harsh, the information probably just snuck in somehow and nobody spotted it. If you put a footnote with a reference to your change, people will know it is a more solid piece of information. dab (ᛏ) 16:08, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

The article on the chariot which FourthAve links us to says:

The earliest spoke-wheeled chariots date to ca. 2000 BC and their usage peaked around 1300 BC (see Battle of Kadesh). Chariot races continued to be popular in Constantinople until the 6th century.

A quick look at The Horse in Art (by Lida L. Fleitmann) doesn't show any earlier pictures of humans using horses as beasts of burden either.

Writing "s***" may mean something acceptable on these pages, such as "horse stall", but it creates the impression that offensive vocabulary is being used on the sly. Let's avoid these words. P0M 00:16, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

The other link that FourthAve gave leads to the following quotation, which does not support his/her conclusion either:

They were nomadic and had domesticated horses, probably as early as their time in the Steppes, and they had a complex pantheon of gods and natural forces.


The guessimate of the time they left the steppes is 2000 BCE, which pushes things back a bit, but another 2000 years? Sorry, bad language will not take the place of citations to reliable authorities. P0M 00:20, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

One source asserts:

However, the earliest chariot currently known dates to the end of the 3 rd millennium B.C. and was found in Kazakhstan, thereby confusing the issue as to where exactly chariots originated.

That's still some fairly short time before 2000 BCE. (See: http://longtermchange.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=Downloads&file=index&req=getit&lid=19) P0M 01:00, 4 August 2005 (UTC)


Evolution Bias?

Dear Editors of the Wikipedia Encyclopedia. I can appreciate the work you go through to provide us with useful information. But I can't help but feel that the part of evolution was not very neutral. Please consider a christians point of view as well. User:Leather 13:11, 4 August 2005

Said POV can be found at Creationism. It doesn't belong in an article about horses. Moreover, simply removing the section on evolution is vandalism. siafu 04:23, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
Not to mention the POV found at Earth that says that it's "shape is that of an oblate ellipsoid". Perhaps that article should consider the views of a member of Flat Earth Society? // Liftarn
The article was vandalised with a completely christian POV repeatedly, anonymously and via the user Leather (same person I assume). Hardly a very christian thing to do. Garglebutt / (talk) 02:24, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Domestication

Check Sredny Stog culture. An article, Dereivka, which is a site pertaining to this archaeological culture from Ukraine will be coming along; it's 4500-3500 BC, with a superabunance of very early horse remains (it was a meat animal), with equivocal evidence of horseback riding as well. EIEC has an enormous article on the horse, and I will be sending some of this along into this article; I will resist turning this article into a meditation on the horse and its place in Indo-European studies. Domestication is sometime around or after 4000 BC. As I think about it, an article along the lines of Domestication of the Horse would be in order. I have enough good information for a short article. --FourthAve 17:08, 4 August 2005 (UTC)


Hunter pacing

At the moment this entry under other horse sports says it is popular in the South. The South where? the US? Britain? POV text here. Deirdre 01:35, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Edit boldly! ;-) P0M 01:39, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Uncategorized

Horse, as it look, everyone can see - This was full description of horse in first Polish encyclopediae in XVIII century :))) szopen

Are there no entries on horse psychology, horse training, etc.?

Patrick0Moran 18:58, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)

"Noncompetitive Horse Sports"? I think the author of that was confused. Daniel Quinlan 06:57, Aug 11, 2003 (UTC)

"Originally, there were three Olympic equestrian events:"

This part does not make clear sense. If originally there were three events, how many are there now? Is "military" one of them? I doubt it, but that is the fourth thing mentioned. Where, then, does the list of current olympian events stop?

Patrick0Moran 08:36, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I'm interested in writing an article on equine locomotory anatomy. Should I start this as a separate article or include it under Horse? I think it could be separate since the article will be quite large (I'm doing my PhD on this topic - equine biomechanics - so there's a lot for me to write!).

Jonathan Merritt 26 Aug 2003

Excellent! I will look forward to reading it. I think a seperate article would be appropriate. With, of course, appropriate links from here. Tannin 13:31, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)


OK - I'm starting to add stuff to the Equine forelimb anatomy page, but it's going to be quite a long process. Please dig in and change anything required to make things more readable as I go along! :-)

Jonathan Merritt 27 Aug 2003


Some points not yet made:

Horse whisperers - call them what you will - are advocates of the horse through the application of training which attempts to see the world from the horse's point of view. Communication (two way) is important.

One might call Xenophon the original horse whisperer. Today, in the US, one might call Tom Dorrance and Ray as some of the original horse whisperers, with the contemporaries John Lyons, Monty Roberts, Pat Parelli, Mark Brannaman, Mark Rashid and so on continuing their work.

Let's not leave out John Solomon Rarey. At least for U.S. horse trainers, he was evidently the second writer of note. (He quotes an earlier writer whose works may not be extant.) He dates back to around 1850. I don't remember whether it was Margaret Cabell Self, or Littauer, or who it was that put me on to him, but it seems clear that he had an enormous influence even in his own day. He was the trainer who could rehabilitate the vicious horses that others approached at risk to life and limb, the model for the Horse Whisperer. (Not, as many have surmised without bothering to read the novel, Monty Roberts.) There is hardly anything of importance that Xenophon didn't say. The volume of his writing was not great, but sometimes he expressed clearly in a sentence or two what more recent authors have taken several paragraphs to relate in an unclear way. But Rarey's rehabilitation methodology and Roberts's communication discovery are not to be found in earlier writers as far as I know. P0M

Horses, unlike cattle, are not ruminants. They digest their food with the aid of a cecum, which although derives less energy per unit mass of food, allows for much quicker digestion, allowing more energy per unit time to be extracted.

They can't vomit, which puts them in a very bad way if they eat the wrong thing. P0M 04:47, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Horses have 20/30 vision. Humans have 20/20. Dogs and cats have less. Horses see color, but not so well in the red spectrum. Horses respond to the Ponzo Illusion the same way that humans do, indicating that in addition to possessing bifocal vision, also achieve depth perception through perspective cues.

Because their eyes are arranged almost as far around from the centerline of their heads as our ears are, they have a blind line in the center of their vision that makes them very sensitive to things coming "invisibly" from directly in front of them. Also, things can seem to jump great distances if seen first with one eye and then with the other (but not both at the same time). Try holding a finger in front of your face, focusing on something at a distance, and then blinking your eyes back and forth. You will seem to see your finger jump against the background of the distant objects. P0M
Horses can strike with amazing rapidity with their front hooves. I don't know whether anybody has ever timed such a strike, but as somebody who has practiced karate for 40 years I know a fast jab when I see one. I once went out to check my horse in a winter rainstorm. My hands were freezing and dripping wet. Without thinking I reached up to touch her muzzle. She reacted as though she had been struck by a snake. If there hadn't been a woven wire fence between us I would have had a broken leg or kneecap. P0M
Most people think of horses as kicking with their hind feet, which indeed they can do. But they don't think of them as animals that can bite powerfully. Horses can take off fingers, hands, or even larger body parts. Unless they have been subjected to considerable abuse, however, a horse would ordinarily only bite with such serious intent if unable to flee a life-threatening attack. (Sometimes horses have seriously injured humans who have been trying to perform dental surgery without taking the necessary precautions.) P0M 04:47, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

-- Bryan

See the page I made called List of equine topics. --Bryan

shouldn't there be more about safety and pollution issues associated with horse?

Travel was much more dangerous and polluting when it was based on the horse. Even with modern innovations such as helmets, horses are much more dangerous than automobiles on a per passenger mile basis. New York City had to remove more than 10,000 tons of horse manure per day, before the automobile significantly cleaned up their environment. There should be more on these issues within the article.--Silverback 16:09, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

Where is the data for your claims on accidents? It's hard to imagine that head-on crashes of stage coaches were common occurrences. Accidents in competitions involving horses are fairly common, but bad outcomes on simple trips to town from the herders' camp to town for grub would most likely have involved bandits and other such hazards. And another thing, at the time when horses were in common use for transportation, traffic density was much lower than at the present time. Riding through a deserted Fairmont Park in Philadelphia, a rider on a horse going at a walking pace and a rider in a car doing the speed limit would both be quite safe. Riders galloping would at most risk falling off going at about 25 mph. Drivers speeding with an equal degree of recklessness might spin out on a curve at 75 mpg. Riders can wear helmets that protect against brain damage but not broken necks. Drivers can use seat belts, and racing drivers can use other protections, so it is a little difficult to know what is being compared to what. Even so, the deadly injuries among non-competition horse accidents are almost all head injuries suffered by riders whose horses spook for some reason. (See Jessica Jahiel's website.) The commonest injuries would most likely be broken arms from riders who fall. A car crash at even relatively low speeds can produce the same head injuries (which is why cars now have padded dash boards), and as speeds increase the probability of serious injuries to the head and trunk becomes much higher.

As for feces, true, horse manure is not too appealing to walk through with bare feet, and somebody needs to remove it from the road. On the other hand, it is not toxic the way lead is. Once removed from the road, it can be used to produce good compost. Even if people just leave it on a country road, it soon packs down into a uniform brown soft and well-compacted mass. Leave a clump of horse manure on your front yard and it become fertilizer. Dump a cup of used engine oil on your yard and you have long-term contamination. P0M 19:49, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

I think most of the accidents would be from horses running past overhanging things like tree limbs, falls from horses perhaps due to footing problems or skittishness of the horses leading to falls, the environmental hazards of horse travel from exposure to the elements and the dangers of working with horses, kicks and what not. Amortize all of these over far fewer miles due to the slower speed and lesser endurance of horse, and you come up with a very dangerous mode of travel. Of course, perhaps the horse could also be considered the 4 wheeled ATV of its day, taken off road and jumped etc, so perhaps its statistics would be weighed down by less responsible behavior.
I haven't found the safety stats yet, but horses were considered a major environmental hazard at the time partially due to the short working life in heavy duty, and thousands of carcasses often left on the streets. The dung attracted flies and generated terrible odors, and created runoff water polution. The din of noise from iron horse shoes and the damage they caused to roads were also problems. The next two paragraphs are from this blog, but they have some credibility because they have references [3]
"Historian Stephen Davies recounts "The Great Horse-Manure Crisis of 1894" in the current issue of The Freeman (some of contents on-line but, unfortunately, not Davies' piece). All urban non-pedestrian traffic was horsepowered and the stuff kept piling up. "In New York in 1900, the population of 100,000 horses produced 2.5 million pounds of horse manure per day ... " And, "Writing in the Times of London in 1894, one writer estimated that in 50 years every street in London would be buried under nine feet of manure.""
"Even better is Davies' reports that, "In 1898 the first international urban planning conference convened in New York. It was abandoned after three days, instead of the scheduled ten, because none of the delegates could see any solution to the growing crisis posed by urban horses and their output.""
Evidently, the shear volume of manure and urine polution per passenger mile, created problems that your simple lawn analogy doesn't capture. Horse and the Urban Environment | HORSE WASTES AND COMPOSTING: PATHOGENS AND WEED SEEDS
I found other sources that are duplicative.--Silverback 07:54, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

One course would involve a simple paragraph or two that calls attention to the fact that travel by horse is inherently hazardous (as is travel by foot, bicycle, and any other known method of transportation). The natures of the hazard are pretty well known and discussed by people like Jessica Jahiel who keep dunning into parents the idea that their kids should keep their helmets on. Runaway horses, both under saddle and pulling a carriage, are real hazards. "Mean" horses (usually = badly abused horses) that rear up and fall over backwards on riders, bite, or kick riders deliberately are also hazards. Getting unintentionally stepped on is a hazard. Those hazards would be easy to find citations for.

Similarly, horse manure on the open prairie is one thing, and horse manure in a stable where horses are kept in stalls for much of the time, in urban settings where many animals frequent the same streets, etc., is quite another thing. Still, stepping in horse manure can be unpleasant whereas breathing high levels of automobile exhaust can be deadly. (Check the number of deaths in hospitals at times of high air pollution.)

If the article is going to make comparisons with automobile transportation the task is inherently daunting because the scale of injuries involved horse accidents can vary from a mild nip from a curious colt to death from a very few kind of accidents that happen when horses are not under control. (One good thing about horse transport is that the horses sometimes have better accident avoidance capabilities than are exhibited by their owners. For instance, if a human being is lying on the road or falls right in front of a horses, then the horse will do everything in its power to avoid stepping on the human.) Maybe some understandable figure like deaths per mile traveled could be found.

As a practical matter, I don't think you could make anything much out of the "pollution" argument. The half-lives of radioactive materials are mostly quite long. The problems posed by disposing properly of a ton of used car oil filters would be immense compared to dealing with a ton of horse manure. For one thing, the horse manure can be dried, bagged, and sold. I guess if you have sick horses you might get an accumulation of tetanus microbes, but horses are now routinely immunized against tetanus. In practice the only time people think about pathogens when they are dealing with healthy horses is after they have stepped on a rusty nail in the pasture. I just checked my standard reference on the diseases of horses and it doesn't even mention manure control as a factor to be monitored. It does have a section on diseases that are shared by humans and horses, but the content is entirely directed to monitoring the health of the horses. No warnings from the State of California about washing your hands after being exposed to motor oil.

I am not sure whether what you want to talk about belongs in this article as anything more than a brief article and a reference to a separate article on hazards, transportation hazards, etc. It is true that horses produce manure, and it is true that in interacting with a horse a human can come off second best. But problems with horse manure and racing accidents (equine hotrodding)seem to me to have more to do with humans than with horses.

What is done in the article on bicycles about injuries due to bicycle vs. automobile encounters, bicycle vs. bicycle-trap storm drains (front wheel trapped stopping bicycle, rider continues forward at 35 mph) P0M 04:03, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

P.S. The first article cited above is interesting and looks entirely responsible. The second link is dead. The implicit idea behind thinking reported in the first article is that automobiles produce less pollution than horses, cars are modern, cars are clean. The story reminds me that at a time when Philadelphia (and maybe some other major US cities) closed some center-city streets to automobiles because of air pollution and traffic congestion caused by automobiles, the city of Taipei was outlawing the downtown use of pedicabs because they got in the way of the automobiles, took business away from taxicabs, etc. Soon the downtown area was clogged with taxis. Taipei outlaws the burning of coal for cooking and replaced that kind of (very bad) pollution with NOx, lead, blaring horns, etc.

The fuel for horses removes nitrogen from the air and sends it as fertilizer to the soil. It captures carbon dioxide from the air and returns it to the air within a year or so with no net gain or loss. Each unit of the fuel for automobiles frees carbon dioxide from petroleum, adding a major volume of hothouse gas. Coal burning not only frees carbon dioxide long locked away, but also addes radium to the air, a health cost that is perhaps not widely known. So quantifying these comparisons is going to be very difficult to do well. P0M 04:22, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

I think the issue is one of scale, one horse accumulates a ton of manure in less than 100 days, and an auto won't have gone through a 1 lb oil filter yet. Urban centers were far more stressed by horses at far lower population levels, and city officials still didn't feel on top of it, whereas even at current levels of service, unachievable by horse technology, automobile pollution is a mere cosmetic rather than safety issue. Incremental reductions in auto pollution reduced mortality at a cost of over $15,000,000 per life saved, whereas mortality can reduced in other areas of society for far less, as low as, $15,000 per life, by improvements in pre-natal care for instance.--Silverback 10:01, September 6, 2005 (UTC)
I have fixed the second link now. Apologies. Evidently composting is quite different than rotting of manure. Perhaps in the past, urban centers did not know how to compost, or could not afford it.--Silverback 10:05, September 6, 2005 (UTC)
Not so different. Composting usually involves mixing several kinds of organic material, fall leaves and manure being a good choice. The pre-modern problem with manure on the road was surely a real one, and another "tragedy of the commons" kind of thing. Just as factories and power plants can burn coal and put out radium to impact the lives of all people on earth, and in so doing impose costs on other people, so too, horse owners on the road would not have ordinarily carried a bag along to collect their horses' manure, so people living along the road would either have to tolerate it, deal with it themselves, or get the city government to remove the manure. I've seen English riding rings that had been used for years and had risen over the level of the surrounding land by about 2-3 feet. I suspect that the rise came from an accumulation of horse manure. That's what will happen to horse manure if you just leave it on the road. If you move it to a dump, it will rot there instead of where it fell. If one were to put all of a city's accumulation of fallen leaves in the fall, grass clippings in the spring and summer, and horse manure all year around, then it would gradually form a mound or fill a gully somewhere. But the main problem would just be that the city government would have to hire street sweepers to scoop it up and cart it away. People have known how to compost for centuries. I just read a mention of composting in the ca. 700 BC Shi Jing, a compendium of early Chinese poetry. P0M 06:24, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Selection of photos

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

The selection of photos in this article currently leaves a bit to be desired. For example, there is not a single photo of a human riding a horse. Can someone with more knowledge about horses than myself pick, add and properly caption a few useful photos from the categories on Commons?--Eloquence* 07:54, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Added two.P0M 06:02, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
If I am sent messages with requests for specific photos I can post some for review prior to adding to the article.
-- Nick Wallis 14:00, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Added a picture of a rider riding bareback on an Arabian. --John Nagle 17:03, 7 April 2006 (UTC)


Horse as a tool

I believe I may have seen one or two horses at some time in my life. (Joking, my point is, I'm no expert). I am interested in the horse as a pre-technological tool. I would like to know how mobile a group of humans riding horses could have been. That is:

  • how fast can a horse move over a long period?
  • how often does it have to be rested and for how long?
  • what is the practical range of a rider per day over some weeks?

I don't know how to find out this material. Is this article the appropriate place for this material? If so, can someone put it in?


It may be a little difficult to answer your question since several inventions have changed the parameters over the centuries. Horses can trot at fairly rapid rates for considerable distances. The trot is a very efficient gait for getting someplace fast. On the other hand, for a male rider on a saddleless horse that has high withers (the two sharp-edged bones that come up right behind the end of the horse's neck, right where you want to sit), and without himself wearing the well-named jockey strap, the limits on travel would probably be human rather than equine. With the invention of the saddle, the likelihood of testicular injury or discomfort would have been diminished although not totally, but the bouncing would have been strong. Modern horses have been bred over centuries to (most of them) have a tolerable trot, but even now some move like a jackhammer. Stirrups were not invented until much later than the saddle. If I remember correctly, stirrups were known around 200 A.D. in Asia, but not until much later in Europe. If a rider is using stirrups and has figured out how to post, then the rider can probably tolerate trotting longer than can the horse.
The distance per day that a horse can make in the short run is considerably longer than what a human can do. I think humans have made 50 miles/day, but without carrying backpacks. If I recall correctly, pony express stations were around 100 miles apart. The champion walkers among humans may be nomadic sheep herding peoples who regularly walk all day long. But I don't think humans could walk 100 miles/day for weeks at a time. Similarly, the pony express horses went from one station to the next and at that station the horse was left behind to eat grass and rest in the pasture and a fresh horse was ridden for the next hundred miles. Chinese horses of fame were called "thousand li horses," which probably means that they could make around 300 miles in fairly continuous travel under emergency circumstances. But, again, that doesn't mean that these horses could rest overnight while their rider caught some sleep and then would be able to go on for another long trip. For one thing, horses spend a fair amount of time eating grass.
I don't have ready access to figures. There should be readily available information on the pony express riders and their mounts. There should be on-line information on endurance races (particularly with Arabian mounts) that would indicate the outer range of single-jaunt trips.
If the real question is how fast a mounted group of people could move over vast distances, then the most realistic records (if they can be found) would be those for the movement of Mongol (Hun) troops from the Far East into and through Central Asia, and on into Europe. Those times would give a pretty realistic range of values for length of march vs. speed during the march. Another, more peaceful, model would be the amount of time it took the pioneers to move from the east coast of the U.S. to destinations on the prairie during pioneer days. In both cases, I think that journeys of, let's say, half the horizontal extent of the continental USA would be matters of months, not matters of years.
If horses were walking over the prairie and so could eat as they walked along, they might make 25 miles/day. At that rate it would take around 4 months to go from coast to coast assuming that their hooves held up well and there were no other major problems. Walking at 3 miles per hour for 8+ hours/day, a human being with some way or other to keep well fed and buy new boots from time to time could make it in about the same time. A rider could go a little faster than a walking man, but much of the real difference would be in how much the person could take along with him/her over hundreds of miles. So the reality is probably that the horses main utility in rapid movement would be the fact that they could pull wagons laden with tools and materials that humans would need but couldn't carry for themselves. Whether a wagon is pulled by oxen or by horses probably doesn't make much difference in terms of speed, but oxen can pull heavier loads. The real utility of the horse for human mobility lies in those situations where it is necessary to move humans relatively rapidly over medium distances -- the cavalry and the pony express. P0M 04:49, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

With regard to the horse as a tool, perhaps some rather more interesting questions to ask are how the domestication and subsequent use of the horse as a tool affected mankind and civilization.

Some examples of using a horse as a tool which greatly affected civilization in extraordinary ways:

* Military transport
* Cavalry (Rome, Greece, Medieval age, British Colonization)
* Transport of goods
* Pulling of fire wagons in urban areas
* Agriculture (plows, herding)
* Royalty (status symbols)

Another way of looking at it is this: if the horse wasn't doing those things (listed above), what would have been doing those things? Answer: with the exception of oxen pulling plows, likely there was no substitute. - Bryan

Please maintain this page

Someone has been adding vernacular terms to the list of equine anatomical names. Probably we should keep these weeded out. P0M 04:49, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Wild Mustang

Is it just me, or does the section on wild mustangs read like some sort of ad for a mustang adoption agency? I don't think mustang adoption is relevant to the article at all. If anything, it may warrant a mention on the separate mustang page. Osprey39 02:02, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree, that section does not really gel with the rest in either tone or content, and IMO adds nothing particularly informative not covered elsewhere. I've excised it. For the record, the passage read:
The wild mustang of the United States is not the rough and tumble bronco it is made out to be. It is a gentle and loving creature that, if properly cared for, makes a wonderful companion. There are many agencies which help horse owners adopt and domesticate these beautiful creatures. However, this type of adoption is only for the seasoned equine enthusiast, as it is a huge commitment. These horses need to be worked with constantly and consistently to domesticate them. Here are several sites for more information: [links to couple of wild horse adoption sites]
--cjllw | TALK 00:38, 1 December 2005 (UTC)


Photos for stable article

Does anyone have any free-license pictures of a stable that we could add to that article? Most of the horse pictures I can find are of horses in beautiful fields or horses doing exciting things. A horse in a stable might be a good picture to add to this article, too, since it's very relevant to the topic. -- Creidieki 23:12, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

What type of stable do you want to illustrate? Field shelters, American Barns, loose boxes? I can take some Creative-Commons licensed American Barn photos. -- Nick Wallis 14:00, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

  • I added a picture of the Stanford Red Barn to the Stable article. --John Nagle 16:59, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Question of intended meaning

The article currently says:

Although a race track is an enclosed area, it is designed for a horse to gallop around, without being too enclosed which may cause the horse to slip while turning.

Is this sentence trying to say something about the need to leave margins of grass or some such surface outside the regular racing track so that a horse can have somewhere to go if it can't make a turn for some reason? The only way I can imagine a horse being caused to slip because of the geometry of the track would be if the lane were narrow and the turn too abrupt so that the radius of the turn would be extremely small.

Copyright violation

The webmaster of www.equiworld.net claims that parts of this article were taken from this website without permission and that those are a copyright violation. Gerrit CUTEDH 19:37, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Which parts, specifically, and where and to whom did this webmaster make the claim? If so, then the offending passages can be removed, but it would help in the resolution to be pointed to the specific detail- a search may miss something.--cjllw | TALK 22:20, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
There are no copyright notices on that web site and I notice a lot of the articles are contributed by external parties and are almost certainly not original research. I had a quick scan of some of the topics such as history and markings and found no obvious correlation between the articles. How did the webmaster make these claims? Garglebutt / (talk) 06:42, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
OK, thanks...although the absence of a specific copyright notice on the site does not mean that its content (insofar as it contains any original research) is not copyright-eligible. However, if the site's own content does not originate there, then that's a different story (but copyright might then be claimable by the external originator). Anyway, I agree, by cursory examination there doesn't seem to be any correlation.--cjllw | TALK 07:01, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

slaughter houses

don't forget the use of slaughterhouses as a legal way out of providing care for an elderly animal. When horses are bought, it must be realized that you have made a commitment to that animal that should last anywhere from 20-30 years under normal conditions and health. But no, that's not the way it works. when a horse becomes arthritic or suffers an accident disabling it from performing certain tasks such as jumping as is common in former race horses, the common reaction on behalf of the owner is to sell the animal because it no longer makes enough income. The animal will likely go to an auction as it is easier to sell horses there because it is quicker than the gruelling process of interviewing applicants and carefully selecting the next owner of the animal for its well being. i'm not sure of the statistics, but i know for certain that the majority of horses that are sold at these auctions are sent to slaughterhouses. Now, do not mistake me as being completely "antislaughterhouse". I have no objections to making use out of what we have, I do have a problem with how killing the animal is done. it has been reported that some slaughterhouses have resorted to using nails instead of bullets to kill the animal because they are more cost efficient. of course I have no concrete evidence, but it certainly does open up one's eyes when you hear more shoking stories of inhumanity that I will not describe here. I do not only hold these views for horses and slaughterhouses either. I hold the same opinion when it comes to euthanasia in animal shelters due to lack of space or in vet hospitals becasue the owner does not wish to take care of the animal any more. This is barely above dumping an animal on the side of the road! on the other hand though, there is the question of over population: "Where would all the animals go?"

Equus ferus and Equus africanus

I've changed some scientific names. Previous name of these animals (tarpan, wild horse & Donkey/Wild Ass) was mainly based on the list of mammals published by Wilson and Reeder in 1993. Their list was based on the code of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (www.iczn.org). Thus the oldest name was used: Equus caballus for the horse and Equus asinus for the Donkey/Ass. These names were first given to the domesticated forms and this had created confusion. However, in 2003 to end the confusion of the names, the Commission ruled that the name for each of the wild species listed in their publication (see reference) is not invalid by virtue of being predated by a name based on a domestic form.

The following names are hereby placed on the Official List of Specific Names in Zoology: (a) africanus Heuglin & Fitzinger, 1866, as published in the binomen Equus africanus (North African wild ass) (Mammalia); (b) ferus Boddaert, 1785, as published in the binomen Equus ferus (Russian wild horse, tarpan) (Mammalia); (c) ...etc....

Website of International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature: http://www.iczn.org The publication (Opinion 2027) can be ordered there for free.

Main reference: International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. 2003. Opinion 2027 (Case 3010). Usage of 17 specific names based on wild species which are pre-dated by or contemporary with those based on domestic animals (Lepidoptera, Osteichthyes, Mammalia): conserved. Bull.Zool.Nomencl., 60:81-84. Pmaas 21:54, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

External links

A lot of the external links on this page are very "unencyclopedic". I think someone needs to trim out the rest! --Malcolm Morley 21:11, 29 December 2005 (UTC)Horses are alsome ya!' Why would anyone want to kill a horse? please if you Know the answer write to

New horse breed template--need your help

I need your help if you know something about horses. I've create a new template for adding a standardized infobox to each horse listed in List of horse breeds. The template is shown here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Horse breeds and there's a sample with minimal information in American Paint Horse. The problem is that I don't really know what should or could go in the box. For example, for the Dog breeds template, we can identify specific major breed registry organizations. But for horses, is that true? And what else makes sense to go in the table--e.g., "type"? (Draft, pony,...what else?) Please respond at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Horse breeds. Thanks! Elf | Talk 23:20, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't think you need Common nicknames and Alternative names. Height would be useful. Breed societies would certainly be useful. --Malcolm Morley 07:39, 18 January 2006 (UTC)